First Year Experience

Flying to Atlanta last week meant I didn't have to fly American Airlines. That was pretty cool. As much as I love American Airlines, what with its airplanes with ashtrays stuffed with decades worth of hardened gum, I find that there are many alternative airlines out there that don't make you feel like you're sitting in your parent's den in 1979.

Not that I'm complaining. Air travel is miraculous. My family and I used to drive down to Florida every year for Christmas, so I know exactly how long it takes to get to Atlanta by car: Crazy long. My brother Dave would drive through the night. That was his forte. Dave is a character – he's far and away the most intelligent person I know not to have graduated college – but more than that, his skill set extends from building databases to cookery and he excels at them all.

The thing is, Dave thinks he is an amazing driver. And maybe he is, if the metrics used are the same employed by the Secret Service to measure how they might drive if, for example, they found themselves forced to navigate the President through downtown Sarajevo, circa 1992. Dave ranks very high in speediness and swerviness, though less high on patienceness and turning-the-other-cheek-at-being-cut-off-iness, which, again, might serve him well in sniper alley but perhaps less so on Interstate 95 at about 11:30 p.m.